BE NOT AFRAID, 2021

BE NOT AFRAID is a collaborative performance video presented by Halo Rossetti on LKTV, created by Jensen Huff and Halo Rossetti, filmed by Mad Bishop, with costumes by Lane Speidel and Jensen Huff, guest performance by Eliza Leighton, and score by Halo Rossetti and Fiora "Feathers" Wise.

What constitutes a porn? A recording of two beings coming together in pleasure? What constitutes an erotic experience? An eye-blink, a brush of tentacles, or vibrations in the air touching the filaments of the inner ear? In BE NOT AFRAID, two extraterrestrials from different worlds meet on earth, investigating the meaning of bodily pleasure.

Halo Rossetti (they/them) is an Australian, Philadelphia-based writer, director, performer, and artist, worldbuilding positive futures in the husk of the capitalist experiment. In their work, through the production of film, video, and performance, they practice worldbuilding as a means to convey their belief that decolonizing, queering, and regenerating are linked processes.

Jensen Huff (they/them) is a Philadelphia-based artist, performer, and somatic practitioner. They have studied Pochinko Clown Technique with Donna Oblongata, trauma-informed & anti-oppressive Somatic Sex Education with Caffyn Jesse, and have performed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art as a member of “Philadelphia Assembled”, a co-operative project depicting radical community building and active resistance, initiated by artist Jeanne van Heeswijk.

Mad Bishop (they/them) is a queer, Philadelphia-based filmmaker and cinematographer from East Tennessee. Their work is often location-driven, and aims to expand understanding of how critical moments manifest in life and reflect on their own role within them.

Lane Speidel (they/them) is a Philadelphia based artist, curator, preschool teacher, trans non-binary person, member of Vox Populi, graduate of Tyler School of Art, and queer. Their works consists of writing, sculpture, fiber work, music, and movement.

Eliza Leighton (they/them) is a South Florida-born visual artist, performer, and Clown based in West Philadelphia. Leighton, an alum of the Headlong Performance Institute, has also studied Pachinko Clown Technique with Donna Oblongata. They are interested in the tension of holding seemingly opposite ideas within the same space: niceness and violence, touch as pleasure, and touch as invasion.

Fiora “Feathers” Wise (she/her) is an actor, singer-songwriter, and music producer out of Brooklyn, NY. She has released two EPs, recorded mainly with Phil Carroll and RAD (Recording Artists Development), titled “Let the Chaos Feed My Evolution” (2019) and “I Am Not Afraid” (2020). Through RAD, Wise also produced Ella Boy’s EP “Cutting You Off” (2020), and numerous singles with JR Price (2019-2020).

Screened on LINO KINO TV, Season 2, August 1st, 2021.

Official selection: Hacker Porn Film Festival 2022.

"Through studying somatic sex education, I’ve shifted my limiting beliefs around erogenous zones. Opportunities to uncover & satiate in juicy erotic sensation can be found in the least likely of places. For those with pelvic floor pain or folks who don’t have immediate access to genital pleasure (or have a complicated & twisty relationship to their junk), the re-imaging & re-wiring of sex is vital & ever evolving. The slowing down is essential.

When imaging how beings outside of earth’s grip would revel in a sexual experience, I was hopeful it could be channeled without replicating some version of human-sex. Imagine! If I have a new body, if that body’s neural-network & sense recognition is wired in it’s own complex matrix ~ rich in unending possibility ~ where would my core erroneous zones exist & how would they want to be touched? Would the sensitivity & arousal present in our genitals be the same sensitivity running along an inner tentacle? How would that change the way I interact with my eco-system? How would additional senses beyond the human body influence the shaping of a sexual experience? What cultural expectations around sex exist for an alien? What ritual? Orgasm? I held a lot of question & curiosity in the conceptualization of my creature, its body construction & its channel to pleasure.

BE NOT AFRAID remains a playful & curious endeavor which challenges how & why we embody the erotic — who we share it with & how we share it."